Michael Moore may have achieved something unique in recent American
history: to become an outspoken denouncer of his countrymen's excesses
without being labeled a "pinko" -- or something worse -- in the process.
In "Bowling for Columbine," Moore provides the audience with a deconstruction
of the American Dream through the nation's gun culture, with the shooting
at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in April 1999, as the
starting point.

While one may dislike Michael Moore for his convictions, it is difficult to deny that his arguments are valid. Furthermore, his books Downsize This! and the recent Stupid White Men are unpretentious and heartfelt, the latter, however, less so than the former. His political positions are carefully balanced by his humour. And unlike Noam Chomsky or Naomi Klein (whose No Logo book design has ironically become one), Moore never had a place -- and, one suspects, no interest -- in the traditional American Left. Himself a college dropout, Moore's greatest strength has been to present himself as an average baseball cap-wearing, National Rifle Association card-holding American, not as an academic or college student who pretended to understand the plight of the nation. The average citizen, not only in the United States and not without reason, doubts the sincerity of the academic Left.

As Moore had put it so well in his 1996 book Downsize This!, most of the American Left today is completely out of touch with reality; Moore described college students at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor discussing "globalization", "neoliberalism", and the exploitation of the Third World by American multinationals, while remaining oblivious to the plight of the janitor who has to pick up their cigarette butts. Afterthey graduate, land that white-collar job they always thought they were entitled to, and move to suburbia, they will perhaps look back at those days with pride, but the janitor will remain a janitor.

Michael Moore, in this context, has become, in many ways, the popularconscience of the United States, a man to whom the ordinary citizen couldrelate, the type of man with whom you could shake hands without gettinga whiff of rehashed ideology.

Moore is most successful when it comes to deconstructing the myth ofthe "American Dream." Bowling for Columbine takes potshotsat every group in American society. Lockheed Martin (not unlike HackerIndustries in Moore's Canadian Bacon) is exposed as a villain forboth manufacturing weapons for the US military and for managing the Michiganwelfare program on which the mother of the six-year-old child who shotanother student at his school near Flint had to rely. The NationalRifle Association, which held a pro-gun rally in Denver immediately afterthe shooting at nearby Columbine High School in spite of the oppositionof local citizens, is linked to the Ku Klux Klan in a hilarious cartoonby the creators of South Park, and its president, retired moviestar Charlton Heston, makes a move which might prove disastrous for hisReputation.

Numbers of victims of firearms demonstrate how important a discussionof the gun culture in America had become. According to the documentary'sfigures, Canada has less than 200 people killed by firearms each year,while America has a disproportionate record of 11,000. Although theration falls to five to one when taking into account that Canada has onetenth of the population of the United States, Moore's point is undeniable:the United States has a firmly entrenched gun culture, unique in the civilizedworld, and cultivated by an antiquated Second Amendment and pressure groupssuch as the NRA. Moore, travelling to Canada, discovered that Windsor,Ontario, had only one murder by firearm in recent memory; ironically, thatmurder was committed by a man from Detroit. He also discovered --unbelievably -- that Torontonians were not afraid to leave their doorsunlocked at any time.

Moments of irony abound in the documentary, beginning with Moore testingthe veracity an ad by a bank which offers a new gun to anyone who opensa new account (he succeeds) and an interview with the brother of TerryNichols, of Oklahoma City bombing infamy, who attempts to demonstrate thathe is not a gun nut, only to reveal that he sleeps with a handgun underhis pillow. It is merely the beginning of more larger-than-life circumstancesthat make Bowling for Columbine a delight to watch. Moorehas become famous for his blend of wry humour and social comment, and hereit works particularly well.

But Moore realized that he needed more serious material to make hisdocumentary relevant. The most horrific moment of the documentaryfeatures footage from a Columbine High School security camera (the verypresence of which indicating that something very wrong was going on inthe education system long before high school shootings became widespread)depicts the raw horror of the event, as does the inevitable shot of thesecond airplane crashing into the World Trade Center against Louis Armstrong'srendition of "What a Wonderful World."

The most important point the documentary expounds is the frenzy createdby the media over personal and national security. Whether it's killerbees, the Y2K bug, unsafe escalators, dangerous-looking Black men, or September11, America perceives itself as constantly under threat, and what couldbe better to reassure the masses than the comforting presence of a Smith& Wesson inside your jacket? And to stop school shootings, whatwould be more useful than metal detectors? A promotional video fora metal detector manufacturer explains how the average high school studentcould hide as much as a dozen firearms, including a rifle, under his clothes-- as though he would need that many. Paranoia means good business.

In the land of news-as-entertainment, where ratings are supreme andwhere fluff such as Access Hollywood can pass as investigative journalismamong a good part of the population, what else could we expect than shock"news" shows hosted by former models and "reality shows" like Cops(whose producer was interviewed by Moore in the film)? The journalisticcommunity is constantly asked to cover criminal occurrences that it hasbecome immune to the unfolding tragedy. In Flint, after the murderof a six-year-old girl by a boy her own age, television reporters werequick to cover the event, but one reporter seemed more preoccupied by hishairstyle than by the situation itself. And as Moore noted, noneof them tried to investigate the background of the tragedy. The stateof American news is depressing to anyone trying to learn more from thenews than who shot who and where. As if more evidence of this isneeded, even the Public Broadcasting Service relies on the BBC for international coverage.

There are, nevertheless, a few negative points about Bowling forColumbine, and most are related to Moore himself. While Mooredoes not claim to be more than he really is, he certainly enjoys claimingthat he is less than he is, a phenomenon usually encountered among politiciansand a number of celebrities (how can we listen to Jennifer Lopez's "Jennyfrom the block" without picking up the irony?). Moore now lives inManhattan, drives a New Beetle, and has two bestsellers to his name. Obviously, the little kid from Flint has gone a long way since Roger& Me, his first documentary. And yet, his lifestyle has notchanged; if we base our judgement on what we see of him in his films, hestill goes around Central Park with the same parka, the same blue jeans,the usual baseball cap, and his characteristically unkempt beard. Perhaps it is intended as a way to express his disgust at the elite towhich he could now claim to belong, perhaps did he want to remember hisown humble beginning, or perhaps did he see his traditional style as necessaryto get his message across. But there remains some fleeting hypocrisyabout this which even Moore's evident belief in his message cannot entirelyDispel.

Furthermore, Moore has an increasing tendency to seek personal exposuremore than he should. In Bowling for Columbine, it includedshowing up at Kmart headquarters twice (where the Columbine bullets hadbeen bought) with two survivors of the massacre who would suffer from theirwounds for the remainder of their lives. The second time, Moore hadinvited the media. Although he could claim a victory when the companyannounced it would discontinue the sales of ammunition, Moore's attitude,and his use of two victims for the purpose of his documentary, was akinto the traditional politician's "I really care" trick.

Nevertheless, "Bowling for Columbine" is a compelling documentary
on, ultimately, the failure of the "American Dream," and discusses points
which are unfortunately too often ignored. It might not be fashionable
to criticize the United States after September 11 (thus proving that Americans
have learned zilch from that tragedy), but Moore artfully skewers political
correctness to create a thought-provoking film. Sadly, only those
already agreeing with his views are likely to bother seeing it.

OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2002 Vancouver Film Festival. For more in the 2002 Vancouver Film Festival series, click here.
This film is listed in our political documentary series. For more in the Political Documentary series, click here.

User Comments

9/13/17

morris campbell

interesting not great gun nuts & red necks beware

10/04/13

yorktown

sucks

2/09/12

David Hollingsworth

Bizarre, funny, and chilling

10/18/10

advanced simplicity

its amazing how people fail to see the importance and meaning of this movie..grow up..

12/30/09

Dane Youssef

Perhaps the greatest documentary ever made. Everything about the world and then some.

9/26/08

Shaun Wallner

Boring!!

4/03/08

beau

michael moore reminds me of family guy! a good argument and a really well made doco!

6/20/07

---

Gun violence result of welfare cuts? Thats a stretch. Loses focus in the 2nd half

2/13/07

johnnyfog

Good first half, but Moore bends truth, and completely loses focus

1/09/07

CJBlalock

brilliant masterwork, Charlton Heston unveiled!

11/29/06

David Pollastrini

Liberal trash

7/10/06

chienne

The pro-con argument; wonderfully done; US obssession with guns brought to the fore. Bravo

3/19/06

MP Bartley

Barnstorming entertainment. Funny, tragic, scandalous and shocking.

10/20/05

john smith

Moore is a fat sack of crap

9/19/05

R.W. Welch

Moore discovers USA is not perfect. Simplistic but nicely ironic.

8/18/05

ES

manson gets a quiet sit down interview, the protestors get snippets cut from their speeches

6/09/05

Agent Sands

One of the most important movies ever made.

5/11/05

Katie Malone

Moore is the master of documentaries

11/11/04

John Aster Habig

This documentary is as monumentous as Catcher In The Rye Heston looks like a jerk

11/11/04

john

a very true commentary on suburban America and its death culture

11/02/04

Evan

Interesting flick

9/22/04

eric Lemus

Great!!! Must See!!!

9/15/04

Dannyboy

Forget "Bowling", you lot wana watch "Gun Traffic",that's if you can get hold of a copy.

8/18/04

Nykytaz

Hard to decide what to believe, but sure makes you think about it twice.

8/09/04

BigBlack

This IS a film worthy of seeing multiple times. The animated satire scene is hilarious!!

8/05/04

Snickerdoodle

Makes you laugh one minute and cry the next and in the end, really makes you think.

7/19/04

G

no even close to being a documentary

7/19/04

Gray

"white people are lazy" fuck you fat bigoted SOB traitor

6/24/04

sumixam

confronting, hard hitting, must see documentary

6/24/04

John Aster Habig

This documentary is as monumentous as Catcher In The Rye Heston looks like a jerk

6/13/04

Daveman

I'm against capitalism, but I don't don't see what this film is trying to get at.

6/08/04

Evan

shockingly true, sadly.

5/25/04

William

Horrid fantasy purporting to be a documentary. Could be better if not advertised as truth.

5/20/04

Proteus

Wish conservatives would watch this and try to understand what prompted it - and laugh.

4/24/04

Zack Morris

Fucking yanks. It's because guns are legal over there. They deserve to die.Still,good movie

4/24/04

star

one sided on some issues, but halarious in alot of the truths and irony

4/20/04

ALI HBOUS

Simply a Fantastic piece of work

4/06/04

John Aster Habig

A great riveting documentary for liberal outsiders

3/25/04

kyle huntley

it is not what the average person sees its what he wonts us to see.

3/11/04

Melissa

Blunt and honest....Good perspectives.

3/11/04

Ron simon

This movie was a great way of showing "realty" and the problems the united states face.

3/09/04

bsho76

Thought-prevoking...probably why gun nuts don't like this movie

3/08/04

david tomlin

Very funny in places, dull for stretches. Rambling, illogical, uninformative.

3/06/04

zaw

Sad But Truth!!!!! this is the best movie about America!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!